LetsRun.com
www.LetsRun.com – 2700 Woodlands Village Blvd.
To: ALLEN
I. TULLAR - ATTORNEY AT
LAW at GROSS, MCGINLEY, LABARRE & EATON, LLP
CC: Claudia Morf, Sr. V.P./CFO (**@rodale.com)
Amby Burfoot (**@rodale.com)
Paul A. McGinley, Esquire (**@GMLE.COM)
Dear Mr. Tullar:
We are responding to the letter
you wrote on
Let us correct a few errors in
your most-recent letter. For some reason you fail to understand that we have
not reproduced the runnersworld.com Peter Snell Interview on the LetsRun.com
site. You stated, “Contrary to your
assertion, to the extent that the entire article was reproduced by letsrun.com,
that republication hardly constitutes fair use.” This statement is false because the Peter
Snell Interview isn’t being reproduced by letsrun.com at all. We are simply linking to the Interview on Runnersworld.com’s website (http://www.runnersworld.com/home/0,1300,1-0-0-1963-1-0-P,00.html).
It is not being reproduced on LetsRun.com as the above hyperlink attests.
Therefore your assertions that “clicking on the hyperlink fails to take viewers
directly to Rodale's runnersworld.com website” and “Letsrun.com
has not created a hyperlink to Rodale's runnersworld.com website” are
false. Clicking on the hyperlink does
take one to the runnersworld.com web-site – it specifically takes them to the
Peter Snell Interview on Runnersworld.com. More specifically, it takes them to
the “Printer Friendly” version of the Peter Snell Interview.
Additionally, you also stated that the Peter Snell Interview we linked to “was stripped of all Rodale ads and navigational information and aids.” If it was stripped of any ads or navigational information, it was stripped of them by Runnersworld.com not LetsRun.com. Runnersworld.com decided that the “Printer Friendly” version of the Interview wouldn’t contain any ads. LetsRun.com didn’t make this decision.
You also even go as far as to say that our “use of the Rodale trademark runnersworld.com by letsrun.com is also infringing.” That’s utterly false. We specifically used the trademark “runnersworld.com” so that no one would think the article came from us. Our use of the term “runnersworld.com” is the complete opposite of copyright infringement. We are purposely using the trademark to show that the article was not written by us and is runnerworld.com’s work. We could remove the term runnersworld.com, but then you would probably be on our case for trying to pass the article off as our own.
We find it extremely ironic that you claim that our linking directly to
an article or interview on another website, in this case runnersworld.com,
is a violation of
Additionally, it has come to our attention that Runnersworld.com has at least
on one occasion “deep linked” to a page on LetsRun.com in exactly the same
fashion that we have “deep linked” to the Peter Snell Interview. On
As Runnersworld.com recognizes, linking directly to another web-site’s article
or interview is not a violation of copyright law. It’s unfortunate that you,
their lawyer, do not recognize this fact.
The case: Ticketmaster Corp., et al.
v. Tickets.Com, Inc. (U.S.
District Court, Central District of Californiam,
“Further, hyperlinking does not itself
involve a violation of the Copyright Act (whatever it may do for other claims)
since no copying is involved. The customer is automatically transferred to the
particular genuine web page of the original author. There is no deception in
what is happening. This is analogous to using a library's card index to get
reference to particular items, albeit faster and more efficiently.”
We clearly are not violating
If you truly are interested in protecting the copyright of runnersworld.com (which you should be) then we urge you to visit the following web-site: www.mariusbakken.com. If you visit the site, you will see that this particular website reproduces copyright material in its entirety throughout its site. In fact, the Peter Snell Interview is reproduced in its entirety on that site currently (see http://www.mariusbakken.com/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.cgi?newsid1021086912,59276). We know copyright infringement when we see it and hope your financial resources can put a stop to it when it legitimately occurs.
We wish you luck in pursuing the
above mentioned instance of copyright infringement but hope that you will stop
harassing us as we are law abiding entrepreneurs. (We’re not sure why Runnersworld.com hasn’t notified you of the
copyright infringement on
mariusbakken.com as they have featured it as their link of the
day in the past and must be aware of the blatant copyright violations. Our only
guess is they must not view www.mariusbakken.com as a threatening competitor
and thus they don’t care. Perhaps, Runnersworld.com and Rodale, Inc only care
to use their vast resources to squash upstart competitors.)
In conclusion, we are pretty much
mystified as why we keep getting threatening letters from you on behalf of
Runnersworld.com as we have never done anything that they themselves do not
do. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the
world-wide web where deep linking is done by thousands if not millions each and
every day. We will not stop deep linking to articles or interviews to
runnersworld.com or any other site per your request. Deep linking is clearly is protected “fair
use” of copyrighted material as established by legal precedent and we are not
willing to forsake this first amendment right.
In the last month, The Dallas Morning News has threatened to sue a site, barkingdogs.org, for deep linking to its articles. The threat has received much attention in the press because it, much like your own threat of a lawsuit, goes against the very nature of the world wide web. The web is a world wide web of links, not a world wide straight line to a homepage, and legal precedent and Runnersworld.com’s own website support deep linking.
Public Citizen, the Ralph Nader, public advocacy group has agreed to provide pro-bono the legal services for Barkingdogs.org should The Dallas Morning News actually file a lawsuit. But no one actually anticipates a lawsuit, since the DallasNews.com (The Dallas Morning News’ web-site) is apparently just trying to intimidate another website. The threat by The Dallas Morning News has garnered coverage in the NYTimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/06/technology/06WEB.html), AbcNews.com (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/links020513.html), Wired.com (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52213-1-13,00.html), and Dotcomscoop.com (http://www.dotcomscoop.com/050202.html#belo) among others.
(Maybe you shouldn’t read those links because if we understand your argument correctly, we are violating copyright by providing the above links above to you.)
We urge you to read the letters from Public Citizen to the Dallas Morning News’ lawyers: http://www.barkingdogs.org/News_Features/May2002/05092002_citizen/05092002_citizen.shtml explaining the legal precedent on Barkingdogs.org side.
If you do not agree with this letter, then we urge someone from Runnersworld.com to call us as it’s much easier (and less expensive) to solve things without involving lawyers. Tell Amby Burfoot to call us as we’ve gotten along with him great in the past. Our phone # is 928-***-****. If not, we’re looking forward to getting Public Citizen behind our cause.
Sincerely yours,
Robert and Weldon Johnosn
LetsRun.com
PS. In follow up to the earlier letter we sent you, please not we have found another instance where copyrighted letsrun.com material has been posted on the runnersworld.com message boards without our permission. An article from our April Fools edition has been illegally posted on the Runnersworld.com message board. It can be found at:
http://rwforums.rodale.com/thread.jsp?forum=4&thread=38773&message=296996
Attachment 1
Examples of Runnersworld.com directly linking to other websites’ copyrighted
articles.
(The examples below were copied from the runnersworld.com website verbatim for
demonstrative purposes)
From: http://www.runnersworld.com/home/0,1300,1-0-0-ZNEWS,00.html
at 6:16 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on May 13, 2002.
Attachment 2
Examples Of Runnersworld.com directly linking to
LetsRun.com
Copied verbatim for example purposes.
From: http://www.runnersworld.com/dailynew/archives/2001/August/010802.html
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